into the yard. They are old trees with lots of roots that were in place when we bought the house.

Anyone have experience or (reasonable) ideas on how to keep sucker saplings from growing up off of the old roots? As it is now, I just keep mowing them off down to ground level.

We can be gone for 8-9 days and when we get back some of them are 10 tall or more. Sometimes I get some hand pruners and cut them off right at the root, but they still come back. I've thought about doing that and then burning the spot on the root where I cut them off with a handheld butane torch but haven't tried it yet.

Pulling up the offending roots would be a nightmare because they're so big and would damage the yard.

I've web searched treatments that one can spray on the root where a sucker is cut off but many of the comments say the stuff doesn't work.

Any ideas? Thoughts? Commiseration?